This post will demonstrate the development stages that lead to our first brick prototypes presented at the formative review.
Our brief challenges us to work in teams to develop a new brick shape which will fit the Ibstock Brick Limited manufacture’s ‘Umbra’ range.
The starting point for our design was an investigation of the current ‘Umbra’ range and summarising what it strives to accomplish. The Umbra range is designed to bring the buildings to life by creating shadows, it changes throughout the day. They are also developed in a way that would coordinate with the standard brick size ( 65×102.5x215mm in UK).
Here is the existing Umbra range, including the measurements for each brick, the colours it is available in as well as the brickwork which can be achieved with it each:
Prior to commencing the preliminary sketches we have also looked at precedents of current brickwork as well as historical such as the “Diamond Pavior” used during the Victorian period. Furthermore we explored textures found in nature or created using other materials such as porcelain, plastics or carved from wood.
As a group we have then began producing sketches of brick designs which respond to the Umbra range, and were inspired by precedents and textures.
A better way of demonstrating the concepts was by testing the designs using blue foam.
These prototypes were extremely helpful, especially when more than one piece of certain designs were produced and allowed us to “stack” them together to understand what they would look like when tessellated.
From this we have chosen 3 designs which we believe to be the most successful. The below drawing shows the exact measurements of the brick designs carefully calculated after studying the existing square-shaped bricks in the Umbra range.
Finally, using a CAD software (Rhinoceros) we have recreated the brickwork at a larger scale, it also allowed us to show how each design due to only having one line of symmetry can be rotated and therefore can create variations of the brickwork by exclusively using one design.
Group Members: Greg, Kyle, Paula, Simon & Tapi
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